'DIANA was a force to be reckoned with'

On the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana's passing, royal correspondent and confidante Jennie Bond remembers her

- Jenni Bond

We sat in her plush drawing room at Kensington Palace, surrounded by framed photos of 'her boys', William and Harry, and dissected the collapse of her marriage to their father, Charles. Diana was in a chatty mood.

It was June 1995: five months before she gave her infamous interview to Panorama's now-disgraced Martin Bashir. But the Princess was already rehearsing some of the lines that were to become so well known. 'There were always three of us in this marriage,' she told me, 'so it was a bit crowded.'

She thought that, without Camilla, her marriage might have survived. 'But,' she said, 'I now know- and we should all recognise that Charles' love for his lady friend is stronger than any marriage he might have made. She is the love of his life. And she has been loyal and discreet.

Diana was in a conciliatory mood that sunny day. She even suggested Camilla deserved 'some form of recognition'. Quite what a 61-year-old Princess would make of the prospect of her love rival becoming Queen Consort, we shall never know.